Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [119]
Vespasia leaned forward a fraction. It was just a slight gesture, but it gave an impression of closeness. “You are older than he is, and it troubles you.” That was a statement, not a question. “My dear, you always were. He chose you for who you are. Don’t destroy it by trying to be someone else. If he loses a friend he has admired in this miserable business, he is going to need you to be strong, to remain honest and fight for the values you have represented to him. Years are accidents of nature; maturity is very precious. He may very much need you to be older than he is . . . for a little while.” The flicker of a smile touched her mouth. “The time will come when you can reverse the roles and allow him to be stronger, or wiser, or even both! Just be subtle about it, that’s all. Sometimes when we most need help, we least like to know we are receiving it. Set your own doubts aside for a little while. Fight as you would for your children, without thought for yourself. Just don’t lose your temper. It is terribly unbecoming.”
In spite of herself, Caroline laughed.
Vespasia laughed also. “May I lend you a pen and paper? Then you may send a note to Thomas to give him the address of this dealer. I shall have my coachman take it to Bow Street. I confess I find it most irritating that Charlotte has gone to Paris. I have no idea what Thomas is doing, and I am bored to doll-rags!” She gave a self-deprecating shrug, pulling the dove-gray silk of her gown. “I have become addicted to police life and I find society infinitely tedious. It is merely a new generation of people doing exactly what we did, and convinced they are the first to think of it. How on earth do they imagine they came into the world?”
Caroline found herself overtaken with laughter; the blessed release of it was marvelous. The tears ran down her cheeks and she did not even try to stop, she had no desire to at all. Suddenly she was warm again, and surprisingly hungry. She would like tea . . . and cakes!
While Caroline was worrying about Mariah Ellison and trying in vain to think of some way to comfort her, Pitt was sitting at the table in his kitchen reading the latest letter from Charlotte. He was so absorbed in it he let his tea go cold.
Dearest Thomas,
I am enjoying my last few days here in a unique kind of way. It has been a marvelous holiday, and no doubt the moment I leave I shall wish I could recapture it better in my memory. Therefore I am looking at everything especially closely, so I can print it in my mind . . . the way the light falls on the river, the sun on the old stones . . . some of the buildings are quite frighteningly beautiful and so steeped in history.
I think of all the things that have happened here, the people who have lived and died, the great battles for liberty, the terror and the glory . . . and of course the squalor as well.
I wonder, do other people come to London and look at it with the same bursting sense of romance? Do foreigners come to our city and see the great ghosts of the past: Charles I going calmly to his death after years of civil war, Queen Elizabeth leaving to rally the troops before the Armada, Anne Boleyn . . . why is it always executions? What’s the matter with us? Riot, bloodshed and glorious deaths . . . I suppose it is the ultimate sacrifice?
By the way, talking about ultimate sacrifice, well, not ultimate I suppose . . . but a young French diplomat, Henri Bonnard by name, has just made a conspicuous sacrifice on behalf of his friend. It is in all the newspapers, so Madame says. Apparently he is posted in London and has come back to Paris to testify in this case I was telling you about—the man who said he could not have killed the girl because he was at a nightclub at the time? Well, so he was—the Moulin Rouge! And the diplomat was with him—all night. It seems they went there quite respectably, like anyone else, then stayed over when the most infamous of the dancers—La Goulue—was doing the cancan—without her underwear, as usual—and then went on to even